Originally Posted by
crb
Here is my beef with the environmental zealots. It is all about money, and pushing forward social and political change they desire. They want scarcity of resources be it energy, oil from Canada, or food for the world through genetic engineering. They want scarcity as a tool to put forward the political change they're after. The various lemming joiners who push the agenda may not realize this, but the people at the top feeding them the bullshit do.
Personally, I find it offensive when a little brown kid dies because some douche from greenpeace prevents that kid from having access to GMO grain. I find it offensive when people have to endure a lower standard of living, including all the ills that come from that, because some loser doesn't want to give them access to available energy. I also find it offensive that these greedy tools are diverting limited funds from areas where they could be far better used. There is no argument about things like lead or mercury, imagine if all the money we're spending on CO2 (you know, what plants breath), was instead used to work on cleaning up things that actually kill people. Especially when you consider that we were all pushed into using lightbulbs that contain a mercury in pursuit of fewer carbon emissions. Yes, it is a tiny amount, multiple a tiny amount by the billions that have been manufactured. LED adoption can't come fast enough.
You know what people do when they have a lower standard of living? They cut down forests and use wood for fuel. Living green is a luxury and if you really wanted to get the world to exist with less pollution you'd not push for policies that retard economic growth. People living paycheck to paycheck don't care about dioxins, they don't buy organic produce, they need to be paid to recycle.
The opportunity cost of fighting this misguided crusade against CO2 is enormous. The only constant in the climatic history of the earth has been change, the earth has warmed and cooled and warmed and cooled repeatedly long before we had SUVs. It is hubris to think we're steering this ship.
I compost, I donate to save the whales, I walk when I can instead of drive, I recycle probably a couple tons of shit a year, my next house is going to have a pimping solar array and be hugely energy efficient. My #1 favorite hobby is gardening, I've literally hugged trees. So fuck anyone who thinks I don't care about the environment. Modern environmentalism is more about politics than science, or anything found in nature.
/rant.